Avoid the Freeze: 5 Essential Hacks to Keep Your Pipes From Bursting This Winter
Avoid the Freeze: 5 Essential Hacks to Keep Your Pipes From Bursting This Winter
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This great article in the next paragraphs involving Prevent Freezing and Bursting Pipes is unquestionably enlightening. Have a go and make your own personal conclusions.
All home owners who live in pleasant climates must do their finest to winterize their pipelines. Failing to do so can lead to calamity like frozen, split, or burst pipes.
Try a Hair Clothes Dryer or Warmth Gun
When your pipes are virtually freezing, your dependable hair clothes dryer or heat gun is a godsend. If the warm towels do not assist remove any type of resolving ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air straight into them might aid. Do not make use of other objects that create straight fires like a blow torch. This can lead to a larger disaster that you can not manage. You may wind up destructive your pipes while trying to thaw the ice. And in the long run, you might even end up burning your residence. So be cautious!
Open Up Cabinet Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cold outside, it would certainly be practical to open closet doors that are masking your pipes. Doing this little technique can keep your pipelines cozy as well as limit the potentially hazardous end results of freezing temperature levels.
Require Time to Cover Exposed Pipeline
One very easy and also clever hack to heat up icy pipes is to wrap them with warm towels. You can additionally make use of pre-soaked towels in warm water, simply do not neglect to use protective gloves to safeguard your hands from the heat.
Activate the Faucets
When the temperature level drops as well as it appears as if the cold temperature level will last, it will certainly aid to transform on your water both inside and outdoors. This will keep the water flowing with your plumbing systems. You'll finish up wasting gallons of water this means.
When Pipes are Frozen, shut Off Water
Shut off the primary water shutoff right away if you notice that your pipes are totally frozen or practically nearing that phase. You will generally locate this in your basement or laundry room near the heating system or the front wall closest to the street. Transform it off right away to stop additional damage.
With more water, even more ice will pile up, which will eventually lead to break pipelines. If you are uncertain about the state of your pipelines this winter season, it is best to call a professional plumber for an inspection.
All home owners who live in pleasant environments must do their finest to winterize their pipelines. Failure to do so can spell calamity like frozen, cracked, or ruptured pipes. If the warm towels do not assist remove any settling ice in your pipelines, bowling warm air directly right into them may aid. Transform off the major water shutoff immediately if you observe that your pipes are totally icy or almost nearing that phase. With more water, even more ice will load up, which will at some point lead to break pipes.
Planning Ahead for Winter Plumbing!
Given how the weather has been recently here in Kansas City, it may not seem like it, but the truth is winter is quickly approaching. As we near the end of September, it is never a bad idea to start considering which areas of your home could use some preventative maintenance heading into the colder months, as well as what you should remember to do once the colder temps settle in. And considering your plumbing system can certainly be impacted by changing weather conditions, guess what we’ll be talking about today?
For those that are visiting our blog for the very first time, welcome to Stine-Nichols Plumbing. Here on the blog, we post weekly about various aspects of the plumbing world. Whether that be DIY tips, brand highlights or anything else, they’re all designed to make homeowners more knowledgeable about their plumbing systems. Believe it or not, even just some general knowledge about one’s plumbing can go a long way in preventing unneeded repairs and keeping everything running smoothly. As referenced in the previous paragraph, this week’s blog will walk through a few of the steps you can do to your own plumbing system to ensure you’re ready to go for the upcoming winter weather and tips for keeping it all in working order as the winter carries on. Let’s hop right in!
Disconnect Hoses
You’ve likely heard this one on multiple occasions, but it is certainly something worth mentioning. Make sure to disconnect any and all outdoor hoses and then turn off those outdoor faucets at the shut-off. The logic behind this is probably something you would have learned in a grade school science class. When water freezes, it expands. Thus, due to this, it’s going to occupy more space. And if there’s no space to occupy, trouble ensues. It’s as simple as that!
Long story short, if you have room to store them indoors, do so. If not, just be sure to completely drain them and then store them in a dry area, such as the garage or a shed. Failure to disconnect the hoses can easily result in frozen/bursting pipes and plumbing headaches for you, especially if there is still water sitting in the hose! Do yourself a favor and disconnect your hoses once you know you won’t be using them anymore for that season. It’s a quick-and-easy step that’s always worth the time.
Headed Out of Town?
Our next point will likely get more and more relevant as we get into the holiday season. Do you remember the extreme arctic blast that hit the Kansas City area in February of 2021? Sub-zero temps, frigid wind chills, it was definitely not the funnest of times for KC residents. Nonetheless, here at Stine-Nichols Plumbing, it’s safe to say our technicians were quite busy dealing with frozen/bursting pipes. What I’m hinting at here is that you never know when we’ll experience extremely cold temperatures. So if you’re going to be out of town for a little bit, it’s never a bad idea to turn off your water at the main shut-off valve. While this won’t prevent every possible plumbing issue, it will at least limit the damage if something bad were to occur. Especially if you don’t have a family member or friend that’ll be checking on your home while you’re away, make sure to keep this tip in mind!
By the way, it may sound like a no-brainer to most, but if you are headed out of town, make sure to also keep the heat on inside while away. You will have some added energy costs from heating a home while nobody’s there, but if it prevents you from dealing with a plumbing emergency, it’s well worth it!
Leave Cabinet Doors Open
As you may start to notice, the primary winter plumbing problem that you need to be mindful of involves pipes freezing. Whether it be indoors or outdoors, they can freeze for a few different reasons, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of various tactics you can implement to improve your odds of keeping everything in working order. Yet another one of these that you’ve likely heard before is leaving the cabinet doors under your bathroom or kitchen sink open. Will this provide complete protection? Not necessarily. However, this is an easy way to make sure some of the heat in your home is reaching those pipes that aren’t insulated under your sinks.
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